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Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Sword-Fighting

Here are some of my favorite pictures of my sons Joshua and Thomas sword-fighting in our front yard this past spring.

Like a lot of parents, I'm not comfortable with my toddlers playing with guns. But since young boys need to fight, I've found that swords are a great option.

A sword (as Ben Kenobi says of lightsabers) is "a noble weapon, of a more civilized age." What's so civilized about stabbing and cutting? Isn't killing someone with a sword more horrible than using a bullet? Why is it morally better to encourage our sons to approach fighting this way?

For one thing, swords force you to fight your foe face-to-face, man-to-man. When swordfighting is done to the death in real life, it literally forces you to face the bloody mess that is killing. Unlike the wielder of a machine gun, who can kill with detached mercilessness, killing with a sword takes effort - lots of effort. Killing is a weighty, grave business, and it should take effort. You should realize what you are doing.

And of course, you don't have to swordfight to the death. You can spar and duel for fun with blunt swords (you can't do that with machine guns!).

My friend Dan Nichols came up with a "sword code" that he taught his sons, which our family has also adapted.

Rules for Sword-Fightin':

1. Sword warriors don't fight an unarmed opponents. If you want to fight someone, make sure they have a sword (or stick) too.

2. No attacking babies, younger unarmed sisters playing dolls, pets, or other non-combatants. Sword warriors only fight other sword warriors.

3. You can't kill an opponent who surrenders. Show mercy.

4. Only cowards and villains stab in the back. Real sword warriors are always just and fair.5. You can't bring your sword or weapon into church. This is an ancient rule: even St. George couldn't bring his sword to church.

Our favorite swords are the rubber ones we used to get from IKEA, though we've had some nice wooden swords made by Uncle Mike. At some point, I'll have to post about the homemade swords developed for serious boy combat by the Robinson family.

12 comments:

Unlike St. Patricks Day, I am certainly NOT hostile to sword fighting! For the sword fighting code you could even add a list of quotes from different heroes (and literary heavyweights) showing what they have to say on the subject.

My 3 year old son decided, after watching part of the Pope John Paul II movie that bad guys use guns and good guys use swords (after all, the Swiss Guards have swords!). I thought there was some truth to that.

I needed to read this. Having only one brother and plenty of sisters growing up, I never experienced sword fighting between boys until a few weeks ago. I immediately called my husband who told me that he and his brothers used to sword fight all the time. I will have to go over your rules with my boys.

There is a young man in our homeschool group who makes beautiful wooden swords. There's an article about him in our diocesan newspaper here: http://www.cdom.org/wtc/wtc_archives/wtc033006/wtc_pages/cover_story1.htm.

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